Behind The Buttons
Posted by jbrodeur on 4/23/2008
Since February we here at Reynolds DeWalt have been engaged in the
process of creating a new web site for ourselves. After a few rounds of
design prototypes we decided on the layout of the site that you see
now. People from all areas of our company gave their input about what
the site should do, how it should look, and what content we needed to
keep/revise/trash.
I was given the responsibility of making sure
that the site moved from concept to reality. Luckily I had a secret
weapon: a team of creative, technical, and practical folks with the
talent and vision to make it happen.
Throughout the design and production phase we aimed to produce a
site that was customer-centric. We have had many discussions that
centered on color schemes, how our brand fits, and which background and
text scheme was better: dark background - white text or white
background - black text. We tossed the rationale around for which
scheme was better on the eyes, what our legacy customers would want,
and what marketing savvy customers would want.
The answer was apparent, let the customer decide what they want. We
chose to create a set of buttons on the header that allows the viewer
to change the contrast options for themselves. Instead of us forcing a
scheme down a user's throat we consciously chose to give them a say in
the matter. Go ahead try it out. Which one is better on your eyes?
Which one do you prefer?
We hope you enjoy our new web site. Come back often as we are planning on rolling out new content monthly.
-jb